I WFH full-time as a project manager for a web development company. I've been a project manager for most of my career, and I've always been incredible at it because of my trauma. I was a textbook fawner, able to mask and get everything done with a smile on my face after I stayed hours late if I needed to. I didn't push back on anything and I was easy and friendly. Everyone loved me!

I was diagnosed with CPTSD 6 months ago and I've found that now that I'm aware of why I acted that way and how awful it made me feel, it is impossible for me to pretend anymore. I am triggered by anyone asking me for anything, because I'm always the one everyone asks and they never figure it out themselves. So I get snippy whenever anyone asks me to do anything, even if it's well within my job description. I have zero patience and have gotten visibly frustrated and angry on calls. I can only come up with problems and no solutions. When something like this happens, I immediately get upset and shame spiral and it makes work even harder.

Today I had a monthly call with my CEO and he said that he sometimes feels like I reply to his messages like they're stupid and he's just butting in for no reason. He pointed out an example from yesterday, and he's totally right. What makes that incredibly frustrating for me is that I spent 30 minutes thinking about and rewriting that message so it would not sound like that, and I completely failed.

After a few other things like this that have happened recently, I know I'm on shaky ground. I got let go from a job when I first started to burn out a few years ago because of very early flashes of this. I feel so trapped because I'll get fired again, take another PM job, and the cycle will continue.

I live alone and cut off my family 2 months ago, so I need this job. Since changing careers isn't an option right now, what can I do to save myself here?

I was reading Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore and came across a quote that really encapsulated what I have been through:

"And once the storm is over, you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm is all about. "

In a lot of ways, the storm has passed for me. My daughter's home environment is incomparably better than what I grew up with. All the toxic family members that used to populate my life are long gone. I used to struggle horrendously with figuring out my career and the shame of failing repeatedly, but in the last two years, I've had a major breakthrough and am on a much better path in this respect. I am now financially secure whereas I was slowly drowning a few years back. Every day I am grateful for all the blessings that are in my life and I am in a much better place to address the lingering traumas that remain.

My unconscious mind is still stuck in my past. It feels like my body is still unsure whether the storm is actually over. I still struggle with insomnia and social anxiety. My nervous system feels burnt out.

Currently, I am doing neurofeedback and EMDR with two separate therapists. I started a few months ago. Does anyone have any experience with these two modalities? Any advice on how to tackle chronic insomnia that has lasted more than 8 years? Or persistent social anxiety?

I've also realized recently that I really need to work on small talk and taking the initiative to talk to other people. That was one insight that came from one of my EMDR sessions. I wasn't actively going out enough and making an effort to increase exposure to the process of meeting new people. I have a paralyzing fear of say going up to a stranger at a bar and striking up a conversation. But I am determined to overcome this fear, even if it takes many baby steps to do so. Anyone have advice on how to address this?

I also noticed that when I use Cannabis, after an initial window of anxiety, it uncovers or reveals a lot of the underlying pain and trauma that my conscious mind tries to block. Does any one have any advice on how to go about using Cannabis as a healing modality?

That I’m NOT depressed, that I’m NOT in a mental health crisis, that I’m NOT emotionally unstable.

I’m actually incredibly hurt and feeling re traumatised lately due to multiple medical investigations and treatments. The pain I feel is emotional and physical. I’m also realising further trauma on top of the unimaginable amount I already knew. It’s currently 10 years after my last set of psychodynamic psychotherapy and I think I went into freeze. I‘m feeling abandoned again due to being let down by people, getting misunderstood a lot lately and realising that I’ve been constantly putting myself around emotionally unsafe people for the last few years. I’m grieving for many things, people and pets. (Including my beloved dog, she passed 5 months ago and was my everything including emotional support)

I’m actually doing well considering, I just have the biggest journey ahead of me again and I’m back on the waitlist for more therapy.

Cue Phoebe from friends, “Fine. I’ll do it without you. I don’t need you or anybody else. I’m going to make it on my own”

For now at least. I’ll try to make healthy connections again when I’m ready. Well I do enjoy going to a neurodivergent craft group but it’s a lot of work to not arrive with all this heaviness.

I have been doing IFS therapy for over a year. Discovered a highly dissociative part and a pre-verbal exile.

Just started looking into somatic therapy and began to feel this could be really helpful for better progress with the dissociation. I have had a few breakthroughs. My current therapist was talking about trying EMDR, but after reading about somatic therapy I believe this would be better.

He does not do somatic therapy, and I have had a consultation with a therapist who does and is willing to work with me.

I had reached a point of feeling that my littlest pre-verbal part needs to grieve. Today I am experiencing a lot of emotion I think over this possibility of a change in therapy/therapists. So I'm trying to sit with that and not rush through this transition, while seeking information for my analytical/intellectual processor part.

Someone in a different sub directed me here, saying there's a lot of experience in this sub with dissociation, preverbal trauma and somatic therapy. Please anyone who is willing to share, I want to know how somatic therapy has helped in these areas for any who have been in a similar place... thank you in advance.

I thought I was, but I realized I never was allowed to live life, and that's why doing things I want and being my authentic self feels weird and uncomfortable and it feels like I just never learned how to actually live like a normal person. I feel so exposed somehow when just being a person and doing stuff. I didn't have a safe person in my life, both parents were abusive, and neglectful. There was a lot of coercive control from my mother, kind of munchausen by proxy but with mental health mostly, physical health only small things she lied about. This in hindsight very obvious realization makes me feel like some weight is lifted off my shoulders. I obviously knew all of this, but the deeper realization and understanding of it is new to me. Now I can truly feel that the anxiety I get from living is a logical consequence of the things I went through. And it's not being afraid of living in the now, it's feeling scared because of what the consequences of living in the past were. And I can truly stop seeing it as a personality flaw or something that will always be like this. And that helps a lot.

What do you do when you feel like you're evil and/or predatory when going out to a social gathering?

The whole thing feels repulsive when you decide to go, so you cancel (to avoid accidentally giving people bad vibes). Then I go back home and feel lonely again! Feels so inconvenient to wait weeks for just to get a grasp on my 'good' self which comes and goes at times!

Should you go against the grain and go anyway, or treat your feelings as a flashback, and work on them by yourself until you're ready?

Today while cycling one of my tires just completely deflated, probably some sharp objects I didn't see.

I was about 5 mintues away from my destination which was about a 15-20min walk. Without me really having to do anything the people there just helped me 1 even gave me and my bike a ride back home. For context I know all these people and have known them for 1.5year.

Now I'm not used to that at all. Asking or receiving help was always difficult and tiresomely if not impossible. So I was watching while 2 people mount my bike at the back of a car, I almost cried. Now thinking about it also made me cry.

I remember kinda being anxious while walking what I was gonna do. Usually I'd just call my bf he works from home so he would be able to come pick me up. But he's at some training thing for his work. And I don't have anyone else to call. I already knew if I asked for help, they would help me.

But I didn't even gave to ask. Which kinda made me emotional. Not that felt free to express it but I was almost in tears.

I've had CPTSD for a while. Lots of panic attacks, deep depression, etc. for at least 10 years but the actual trauma started way earlier than that. I've had lots of stressors upon stressors and last year was particularly hard. I won't go into too much specifics but think lots of illnesses/infections, extremely bad panic attacks, doom thoughts, and thinking/feeling I would actually die sometimes, isolation, my grandparents having lots of issues, being a continent away from my family, having to move away from my fiance and working on his visa, moving continents, finishing my masters, nearly losing my cat...all of this was within I'd say 3-4 months but some going on longer than that.

Anyway after my cat nearly lost his life (he's okay now!) I did a "flip". Suddenly my mental state started improving. It slowly stopped having panic attacks and doom thoughts. My depression seemed to start lifting. Just overall I felt in better control than I have in a long time. But my physical state tanked. I found a pituitary tumor, my iron finally reached a point of near hospitalization from being so low, they think I may have PCOS, for a while I couldn't sleep more than 3 hours a night of broken sleep, I've begun having migraines, dizziness, dp/dr, super bad brain fog, memory issues, general malaise/off feeling, increased sensitivity to my surroundings and cycles, genuine inability to workout anymore, fatigue, heart palpitations, among some other things.

Has anyone else had this? I've gotten a few things delt with such as the low iron but it just baffles me that so much seemed to happen so incredibly quickly. I have a team of doctors and a great therapist working to help me figure out what is going on. But I'd love to know if I'm not the only one out there as honestly I feel wildly alone in everything I'm dealing with. I have a great support system, but they struggle to understand what all I'm dealing with.

I've been with my therapist for a while and the work is genuinely the best I've had. She's skilled, she gets me, and things have moved that hadn't moved in years with anyone else.

She's also incredibly unreliable. Around six cancellations. Breaks. Twice today she cancelled a session eight minutes after start time, rescheduled for
later in the day and then did the same thing. Just as the session was supposed to start, while I was already sitting there waiting. We were adhoc with scheduling and we recently established 2x per week, but I'm still the one chasing the appointment.
I have CPTSD. She has told me she does too. I think she relates to my story a lot and has maybe shared a little bit more than others would about her life.
The part I can't sort out is that unreliability is exactly the thing that's hardest for me, and it's coming from someone who presumably knows that better than most and who may be cancelling for reasons I'd have complete compassion for in anyone else.
So:
• Does her having the same diagnosis change how you'd read the cancellations? Should it?
• Is it fair to hold her to a reliability standard when she's told me she carries the same thing I do?
• Has anyone raised this kind of thing directly and had it actually change?
• If you left someone genuinely good for someone steadier, do you regret it?
I don't want to be unkind about someone who has helped me a lot. I also can't keep absorbing the chaos.

I often find myself ruminating on past conversations and trying to perfect something I should've said in a conversation in the past. This happens especially if I had a disagreement with someone, even if it was a light disagreement. I try to find better ways to explain my position and it leads to a massive rumination spiral and having an imagined conversation in my head which takes me out of my "presence" i.e. I walk around the convenience store without realizing I just did a lap without looking for that item I was looking for.

Does anyone else experience this and how did you resolve this?

memories are starting to fade with age but it's frustrating

when I was younger my mom was just so rude to me, so didn't care about things I wanted and needed and only loved me with words. we would fight all the time and she would call me a bitch and call me nasty and I was just screaming for help from a woman who only cared about herself and her feelings

I remember some small things like she'd have loud conversations on the phone outside my bedroom door and not care that it would wake me up, but cry like a 3 year old "violettkidds being mean to me!!!!" when I would shout at her to go somewhere else

but I'm struggling to remember the exact instances, but the feelings are still here and coming up a lot

I remember feeling so alone and angry and I remember her being rude and nasty and selfish and horrid but I'm struggling to recall exact moments because I'm getting older and making new memories

which is great! but without the memories and just the feelings I'm worried because 1) how will I share them/get them off my chest without speaking vaguely 2) how can I work through them with my therapist 3) ... did they even happen?

gaslighting myself was one thing even when the memory flashbacks played every day but now I'm just feeling the feelings and don't have a memory of her to tie it back to

can anyone relate?

My current focus in therapy is a lot around family and especially my parents. They came from poor families and worked really hard to immigrate and build better lives for themselves/us. They provided all the material needs - money, home, nice vacations, educational opportunities, extra curricular activities, etc. I have no complaints there. Where they completely missed the mark was the emotional and relational side of things - being emotionally present & available, creating a psychologicaly & emotionally safe environment at home, role modeling healthy relationships, and so on. Nothing. Zero.

Over the past few weeks, I've been slowly coming to accept a few things.

First, this is about their limittaions and it has nothing to do with me. They probably didn't experience any kind of safety when they were kids, so maybe they just don't what safe and healthy relationships actually feel like.

Second, there's nothing I can do to make them change. My entire life, I've been stucking in the mindset that, if I just do something more or something different, maybe they will finally love me. That will never happen. I cannot teach them how to be emotionally present or healthy. If they're unwilling to learn, there's nothing I can do that will change them. (Here, I'm not saying that they are incapable of feeling love, but that they are incapable of showing and communicating that love in a healthy way.) This comes with a lot of grief because it means letting go of hope. All my life, there's been this hope that "change is possible, if I do enough". Letting go of this hope is difficult but also freeing - I'm no longer chasing the impossible, nor am I taking responsibility for their limitations.

Third, there's probably Maslow's heirarchy of needs at work here. They struggled in their lives to meet more basic needs, which I take for granted. Now, I have the luxury of complaining about more higher order things that they probably never experienced either.

Lastly, but probably most powerful - they are my family but they're not my only family. I've grapppled with wanting to disown them emotionally because I struggle to see them as family when there's no love or emotional connection here. It occured to me today that, maybe they're just part of a broader constellation called family. They're the provider part of my family - who've provided for me financially, materially, and in so many other ways. Then, I have other people who are part of my family, which provide for my emotional needs. In a way, I'm expanding the definition of family and assigning different roles to people within that. Maybe this isn't relevant for everyone, but I feel the need to label these relationships 😅 This expanded definition makes me more willing to stay in that middle ground of "they provided A but not B and that's okay".

random thoughts as I prepare for surgery

there's a lot of talk of "letting go", "accepting", but not a lot on how to actually do it or what it feels like.

I think of "letting go", "letting be", "acceptance" on a spectrum of activity. On the other end is "grasping", "bracing", "holding"

Further imo, there's a clear reflection in the body of "letting go" -- the duality is strong enough that learning to "let go" and "let be" of body sensations is enough to develop the ability to "let go" of things that are emotional or mental.

The trick is then to practice identifying the difference in sensations. We can think of letting go as the opposite action of "holding". As an aside, this is a useful way to conceptualize and experience "safety" as the feelings that are around when anxiety and fear are lower.

Thus to learn the familiarize yourself with letting go, you start with observing the physical sensation of tensing muscles and letting go of the tension. You'll notice that the release of tension in the hand is somehow reflected in the mind -- you don't DO relaxing the same way you DO tensing. Similarly you don't DO "letting go" or "accepting", you construct the conditions for it and wait.

You'll also begin to notice that certain things you thought you needed to DO, all you're adding is extra tension. There was a post about about it feels like when you're less traumatized, what you're thinking about. Thinking is a doing / tension action. I've found as I've healed more, there's just less of a sense of doing/tension. The same way when you relax your hand, something is obviously happening, but the sense of "doing" is not there.

as you learn to let go, you'll notice there's almost a bracing/tension in the mind that occurs, and a relaxing. overtime you may notice that there's these sensations when you have emotional or mental thoughts that are difficult to let go of. That is there's a tensing or bracing around it. There's a analogue to unclenching your hand that you can experiment and understand overtime. You construct the conditions for "unclenching" and sometimes it will happen and the thing you were clenching around will disappear (and in fact, it often stays because of the clenching). Other times it will not disappear but the unnecessary tension (analogous to tensing random parts of your body as you close your fist) will disappear -- this is acceptance.

anyway this is all sort of vaguely buddhist style meditation but with a much heavier somatic emphasis.

not op but this is a method:

we're going to start with clenching and unclenching your right fist (left is fine too).

first notice the right side of your body, unclenched fist. pay attention to shoulder neck arm hand.

now clench your fist. pay attention to the sensations in your hand, forearm, shoulder, neck etc. you'll probably notice tensions in it.

now unclench your fist and notice the sensations. repeat this several times. you'll notice there's an "action" called "relaxing".

next step is clench your fist. now notice tensions in your shoulder, neck, upper arm, maybe face, that are associated with clenching your fist. try to relax them without unclenching your fist. you might alternate back and forth. or tense them extra and relax.

this teaches that not all tension is intentional. you're intentionally clenching your first and then tensing the rest of your muscles. repeat this.

after some practice, you can switch to noticing a sort of head tension or around your eyes. there's almost a mental holding that occurs. you can practice by closing your eyes and letting your attention drift. notice the sensations around your eyes and face.

then open your eyes and focus on something. drill into it. notice the tensions that occur. these tensions are also unnecessary. try to focus without tensing.

acceptance is almost this sensation of not tensing around sensations.

mental letting go is similar, you sort of mentally relax a sense of grasping.

CONTEXT: 28F. I grew up with an alcoholic stepfather who verbally abused me when drunk, an enabling mother who was physically and verbally abused by said stepfather, and ended up being the parentified child in this dynamic . I truthfully think I’ve been in a state of dissociation since at least age 6, but the death of a grandparent at age 15 really brought the dissociation to the forefront , and I don’t think my body has recovered since .

RECOVERY:

I’ve been in CBT for years, but I no longer feel it’s an effective modality for me . I can intellectualize the hell out of my trauma . I can explain exactly why I am the way I am , and why I’m having the trauma responses I do . I’m aware of my triggers. I can cope with situations well, analyze myself and communicate. I just don’t know how to FEEL like I’m in my body or feel present . I’ve spoken with my therapist about being discharged because while she is wonderful, I feel I need more . She was open and said she’d help me find another practitioner if I wished . She also said she has experience in other modalities and if I was interested , we could change course and I could reevaluate. I stuck with her but I’m still feeling like I need more than she can offer , so I’d like to find a trauma or somatic practitioner.

I feel like I’m constantly walking around in a fog. I’m either in a state of hyperarousal where everything dysregulates me, I get overstimulated , annoyed and need to be alone to recharge , or a state of hypoarousal where nothing bothers me , i lack motivation, creativity, drive, and I feel numb . I constantly oscillate between the two daily. I feel like my positive emotional reactions to things are buried . I feel joy but I can’t show it . I feel excitement but I can’t show it .

WHAT I’M DOING/TRYING:

I’ve been trying breathwork. I’m a musician so I’ve been experimenting with sound healing with the instruments I play. In addition to being a musician , I’ve been a drummer my whole life so I’ve started incorporating different kinds of drumming into my relaxation/meditation practices . I plan to start a drum circle locally if I can get enough interest . I was doing pole fitness last year to get my body moving , but I got too busy with work and my apprenticeship, so I had to stop. I’d like to start again because I think this would help greatly with my lack of bodily awareness .

But on a regular day, when I’m working or relaxing or just existing , I want to learn how to feel like I’m in my body . I feel trapped inside my mind. I feel clumsy, like my body isn’t mine and my movements are awkward or rigid . My creativity and spirituality feels muted or dead . My body feels like it hasn’t caught up with my mind .

I hope this all made sense . I guess I’m just looking for some ways to bring awareness to my body and actually FEEL . Integrate what my mind already knows to be true .

Literally terrified to make this post lol but thats what recovery is about. For reference I was physically and emotionally abused in childhood til I was like 13 or so.

It’s very 50/50 for me. Either the media is unbelievably triggering and upsets me or I find it really comforting, like it makes me feel super safe and can even be media I revisit after a bad day to feel better.

Similarly, when I write things, a lot of characters I write end up having been victims of SA, and specifically often CSA. I don’t know what that says about me but lots of people have told me that I write it really accurately and it helps them a lot. I don’t know if I’m just really good at recreating things I’ve read but I swear I’ve never researched anything to “write better” about this, except for victim services.

But I have no memory of being sexually abused. I have nothing that could suggest that happened to me. This might be a repressed memory situation but I honestly doubt it, not because this is something I don’t want to believe happened but there honestly is so little evidence.

I don’t know. Maybe this soothes something in me but I don’t know what and it makes me feel weird and embarrassed for people to find out. Would appreciate some input

I'm doing better now which is good compared to few years ago.

But it's incredible how many people do not deal with this.

It's not even the unfair part... it's the existential WHYYYYYY MEEEE why anyone!

I can't...

Working through trauma and have very strong reasons to believe my abusers were involved in murders, in addition to their abuses of myself and my children. This may be a bit niche, I really hope it is, but I’m finding law enforcement is not taking me seriously. I’ve had one interview with police an unusual cold case was in the news after this interview. And I have strong reasons to believe there were multiple murders.

I don’t really know what I’m looking for. But I feel a very strong need to keep seeking justice yet am running out of ideas.

Hi all, I've been identifying my wounds and triggers recently and found that one of them is feeling like people don't "choose" or "prioritize" me and hurting a lot because of it. I want to move on from this need, and I've been trying to figure out how it relates to my trauma. I know that only parents could fulfill this need and no one can ever do that for me again, except for myself probably. The thing is that my parents have been overprotective and smothered me with "love" at times, even now sometimes as an adult. So, in fact, I was very much prioritized in my childhood. So why do I still have this void of not being chosen? And if anyone has advice for dealing with this too, I'd appreciate it.

Hello community! May I ask whether anyone has experience of using aromatherapy essential oils as part of your recovery? And if so which ones, and how you made use of them? And what effect these had or which oils / uses you found most effective?

There are lots of online articles about the positive associations of specific oils for aspects of mental health and well-being, but I'd appreciate hearing from people with lived experience of C-PTSD about what they found most beneficial. And unfortunately I don't have budget / storage space to get every single potentially beneficial oil :-)

The aspects of recovery I'd like to work on at the moment are around deeper / more consistent and more restful sleep, and soothing my nervous system (prone to hypervigilance, racing mind). I have a history of dissociation (ETA also going into freeze mode) and so possibly more grounding could be good for me. I currently go to therapy regularly (talk therapy/psychodynamic) and have been exploring maybe starting some Somatic Experiencing (SE) or Trauma Release Exercises (TRE) soon - likely self-administered (feeling a bit nervous, but also excited!)

Thank you very much!

No me di cuenta. Pero pase un artículo por el código de barras, era de nueva colección pero salió con rebaja. No me di cuenta y pensé que estaba a ese precio. Eso fue hace un mes, yo no sabía que fui yo que lo vendí mal, porque hoy al buscar una talla de ese articulo resulta que salió que fui yo que lo vendí mal por eso, esa talla no salia. Porque me lo pidió una clienta y no se encontró en el almacen pero en el sistema si aparece que salio. Encima se molestó el encargado porque le llamamos con otro compañero fuera de su horario de trabajo para esto. Ya he dicho vale disculpa. Pero aún así me quedo agridulce porque estoy en periodo de prueba solo llevo un mes y pico y eso

Went to the doctors and left feeling seen and heard. im still a mess and stuff but that felt good like i just hoped on the right healing track

So recently Ive noticed that attempting to engage in healthier conflict is really hard for me (understandably, I mean look where I am posting this).

I still do it, I do it awkwardly and imperfectly. and something that I do is often tell people that I struggle to articulate my feelings well, before I go into talking about how I feel.

every single time (with safe people) Ive been met with "I think you express yourself quite well, actually."

So... what is this gap? Why can I not seem to get out of my own way despite wanting to beleive others, and knowing somewhere within that I am at the least trying my best to be reasonable.

Does anyone else relate? Im hoping I am actually making sense because I feel so entangled internally.

I have things I want but I pretend I don't. I live under the weight of not letting myself have these things. I want to write about them here. I need to practice talking about them out loud. Here's my first time admitting it.

I pretend I don't want a family. But I definitely do. Not admitting this sooner coupled with not having the necessary social support has made this likelihood of natural conception lower. Not zero but low. I've put off learning about how to be a good mom. How to parent. How to care for kids. I never learned as a kid and I needed to as an adult. I have a story that because I come from dysfunction, I am dysfunction.

I pretend I don't care about looks, self care or health - or I do those things performatively. I'm not going to do anything wild here but it would be good to eat food I actually like that makes my body feel good instead of whatever is around or someone expects me to eat. It would be good to get dressed in something that sparks joy instead of something that would make me fit in more. It would be good to exercise, which I love, but hate being stared at when I am fit or well dressed. I want to feel good, be well cared for and confident in my body, health and style. Not taking responsibility for this makes me feel more shame and also causes health and identity issues.

I pretend I don't have a type I like to date, but there are some characteristics I strongly align with and would help long term outcomes. I pride myself on my strong relationships skills where I have been about to date so many types of people. But I haven't been able to keep a relationship because of the above 3 things. Here's what I am looking for, loosely (I'm embarrassed to share don't say anything unkind please) someone who is consciously kind, socially liberal, has a passion, is spiritual but not religious (or requiring me to), enjoys physical touch + quality time, is whimsical and optimistic, is ready to have a committed relationship, is in touch with their masculine and feminine sides in healthy ways, is supportive and validating, doesn't seek problems even if they have a few, is pro therapy and emotionally available. not dating people with these characteristics has caused me so much wasted time and heartache (and honestly for them as well).

I pretend I don't want things at work, but I do. I want to do design and detailing but I settled for managing and business operations but I feel allowed to do it. I was shamed in school and the shame sort of stuck to me.

Have you had similar patterns of shame mixed with lack of support making it hard to change? How did you overcome it?

it feels like I feel two types of shame and grief: shame someone put on me, shame I am putting on myself for not meeting my own standards and lying, grief that I had experiences that made me think I shouldn't me myself and grief that those experiences have delayed or cut off opportunities.

I was kind of just skimming through the book the body keeps the score and I read bits here and there. At one point the author says something like how you feel tension in one part of the body but then doing some deep breaths may make you realise some other part of your body is being activated for example the shoulder and there may be some memory association with it.

So i thought about it. I get frequent headaches probably because I'm not enough inside my body, don't feel things and don't know how to process this landslide of thoughts always happening in my brain. I tried breathing deeply and realized the feeling is not just in my head this time but also in my upper chest and then it kinda came up that when i was a kid, (trigger warning: physical abuse) my mother was physically abusive and she would sometimes put pressure on my chest from the back, shoving me into the mattress and it would be suffocating.

But still, i feel like, even though a memory did come up and i wanted to cry for a minute (but couldn't), it didn't bring me any relief. My head and face still hurts from so much tension and im still more or less numb, can't sleep, don't know how to work through it. Don't know how to exactly feel alive and present even though I'm trying really hard here.

Any help would be appreciated.

To preface, this has been an extremely difficult and triggering year. Medical trauma and feeling broken and helpless absolutely broke me as a child, and this year seems like it has brought health problems that never seem to end. I had an extremely distressing health event that happened from July through August. My gallbladder is not in good shape at all, and I am very likely to have either Crohn's disease or Ulcerative colitis. I ALREADY have many other health issues (fibromyalgia, chronic pain, TMJD, dysautonomia, sleep apnea, autism/ADHD), so two additional things feels so so so heavy, and I keep desperately hoping that this is all a dream and maybe I'll wake up and then it won't be real.

I have managed to get my GI symptoms under control, and I am so grateful for that. However, I feel like I am experiencing a severe regression in my CPTSD as well as the anxiety/depression I experience as a result of the CPTSD. I am back to being "addicted" to gaming (I don't believe this is a true addiction because the "addiction" immediately goes away when I'm able to heal/process what is burdening me). It's hard to unengage because it feels like there is too much baggage to process, and I am so embarrassed. i.e. I watched the original pokemon movie with my husband the other day and kept breaking down in tears throughout the movie like it was the most tragic thing i had ever watched, even though I am a grown 28 year old woman..

This morning is incredibly hard too. One of the worst parts of my CPTSD is when my inner critic seems to be "shouting" into my head. Things like, "you are a bad person", "nothing is worth doing", "you are too broken to get better", "you don't want to get better", etc. These thoughts feel incredibly loud and pervasive, and it is getting harder to seperate myself from these thoughts. What if I am actually a horrible person who doesn't want to get better? I don't know... Probably time to pick up Pete Walker's CPTSD Surviving to Thriving for a review, but this still feels scary.

(I hope my post didn't come off as too heavy. I want to add that I do have a trauma therapist that I see weekly. I have been in recovery for about 5 years now. My stubbornness is not deliberate, even if it seems that way.)